1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the distributing of video programming. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for encoding, formatting, storing and retrieving data representing a video program as a plurality of concurrent, overlapping presentations of the video program to facilitate virtual on-demand access to a single copy of the video program by virtually any number of subscribing viewers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Billions of dollars are spent by consumers annually to rent movies and other pre-recorded video programming for private playback at their convenience. Such video programming can be rented in many forms, such as video cassette tapes for playback using a video cassette recorder (VCR), video disks for playback on video disk players, or as CD ROM's for playback using personal computers and other forms of CD ROM players.
Renting video programming in this manner is desirable because it permits the user to view the programming at any time and in any manner. For example, the user may view some portion of the program at one time and the remainder of the program at some different time. Further, the user may replay certain portions of the program or view the program in its entirety several times. The user may access the program from any point in the program by simply fast-forwarding or reversing through the program. The user is thereby freed from the scheduling constraints of available network or cable television programming.
Cable television and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) companies would like to compete in this arena by providing users with the same freedom of use they enjoy through video rental. This potential service has been dubbed "video-on-demand." Such companies would clearly enjoy an advantage over video rental establishments in providing this service because users would not be required to leave the comfort of their own homes to rent a copy of the video program (nor would they have to return it when finished). These companies have been heretofore constrained, however, by existing playback and distribution technology.
It would be prohibitively expensive for a cable television company to provide true video-on-demand using currently known technology. To duplicate the advantages of video rental and in-home playback, the company would have to provide a dedicated playback resource to each cable subscriber, along with an expensive memory array containing a library of video programs from which the subscriber could select programs for playback through the dedicated resource. Further, the cable distribution infrastructure would be required to have sufficient bandwidth to distribute a different video program, or at least a different playback of a video program, to each subscriber connected to the network. Of course this would be impossible without a leap in technology and replacement of the current distribution infrastructure.
One possible compromise would be to produce multiple, overlapping playbacks (i.e. presentations) of the same video program, such that a new presentation of the program would begin, for example, every five minutes. For a two hour video program, a total of twenty-four overlapping presentations of the program would be made available to subscribers. Each subscriber would then have a receiver capable of selectively receiving any one of the twenty-four presentations. Although a subscriber would not enjoy full video-on-demand, the subscriber would have to wait at most five minutes to begin viewing the program in its entirety (or to access any point within the program). Further, the subscriber could fast-forward or reverse through the program by accessing a different one of the overlapping presentations, although he would be constrained to do so over the five minute intervals.
Although such a compromise would decrease both the requisite number of playback resources and the necessary bandwidth, the costs of implementing such a system in currently known technology would still be prohibitive. For the above example, twenty-four playback resources would be required to produce twenty-four separate presentations, each being transmitted over one of a limited number of channels comprising the distribution medium. Further, without sophisticated server technology, such a system might require twenty-four separate copies of the program.
Complex disk-drive arrays or video servers have been recently proposed, each having thousands of video programs stored in their memory and each capable of serving up to two hundred subscribers. The cost of implementing a video-on-demand system for the millions of current cable subscribers, assuming that such advanced technology could be implemented, would still require billions of dollars in capital investments. Further, full implementation of a service based on such proposed server technology would require that the current cable and telephone distribution network infrastructure be restructured and upgraded over the next several years at a cost of an additional $2 billion per year to increase its bandwidth. Implementing VCR-like functions, such as fast-forward and reverse, would not only increase the complexity of the servers, but it would also impinge on available bandwidth because each subscriber must be able to communicate commands back to his or her dedicated server. Such "back channels" are not even available in the context of existing DBS systems, and most existing cable distribution systems.
The best service that cable television and DBS companies have been able to offer thus far is a pay-per-view service that permits users to request (either over the telephone or directly through the cable network) an offered video program for a fee. The company then permits the subscriber to receive the selected transmission of the video program at a predetermined time. These services are far from video-on-demand, however, as the number of available programs and the number of starting times for the programs are severely limited. Thus, the subscriber must still wait for a scheduled start time at which a desired program will be transmitted over the distribution network. Further, the subscriber does not have the freedom provided by an in-home playback resource such as a VCR; the program is still just passively received.
Thus, there is a need in the art for technology that can provide consumers with virtually random access to as few as one copy of a video program through as few as one playback resource and that is operable with the existing telephone and cable distribution infrastructure.